


Cocoon

by SharpestRose



Category: Spider-Man (Movieverse)
Genre: Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-08
Updated: 2011-07-08
Packaged: 2017-10-21 03:41:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/220526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SharpestRose/pseuds/SharpestRose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter opens the door but you speak before he can. Your pride's still freshly bruised from the cemetery earlier, but you don't need acting lessons to learn how to stick on a smile.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cocoon

Out came the sunshine and dried up all the rain, or so you hum under your breath in the hope the weather will take the hint. It doesn't, of course, and you're soaked through to the bone. There could be ice chips in your blood for all the warmth you've lost.

Peter opens the door but you speak before he can. Your pride's still freshly bruised from the cemetery earlier, but you don't need acting lessons to learn how to stick on a smile. Your home life growing up taught you that.

"I'm just here as a friend. You look like you need one or two around here," you say in a bright voice. Harry's a dark almost-silhouette against the window, the rain outside painting moving shadows on his face. At the funeral you noticed for the first time how much of his father was in his features, now that resemblance has faded and you're not sorry to see it gone.

"Do you have something I could change into? I'm soaked," you state the obvious, smile on so firmly your cheeks are starting to ache.

"Yeah, sure," Peter stammers, and leads you upstairs. His room's a mess, that doesn't exactly shock you, but he finds clean stuff folded on Harry's big neat bed, obviously fresh from a professional laundry service. A black cashmere sweater that hangs loose on you, making your features sharp and stark. You've always hated the way you look in black. Green silk boxer shorts that threaten to slide off your skinny hips, seems like you've been hungry every day since you moved into the city. You twist the slippery fabric into the waistband of your thong to keep it up, the legs ride up and show off more of the china whiteness of your thighs.

Peter's making dinner, chopping vegetables with a deft, quick hand. You hate preparing food with a passion so you go over and sit near Harry.

"Hey," he says in a quiet voice, croaky like there's a lump in his throat.

"Hey yourself," you respond. He brushes a wet lock of hair away from your forehead and his fingertips feel burning hot.

Dinner's not exactly a merry affair, but Peter's a good cook and you feel full for the first time in a long time. It rains into the night, you all sit on the couch and watch some old movie, it's kinda ironic to watch a grainy black and white film on such a top-quality tv when you've been watching the Simpsons on a grainy black and white for so long.

That tribute video clip with all the pop stars in blindfolds is on MTV, you flick the channel over quickly. It's skeevy, the way people gravitate to tragedy and hover there. You hate it.

"The only thing the people love more than a hero -" Harry says.

"- is one who dies trying," Peter finishes the thought, and Harry looks over. "I heard your Dad say it once."

"He thought of you as his own, you know."

"I know," Peter nods. You don't say a word, surfing until you find an infomercial for a juicer and watching the oranges smushed into a pulp.

When you wake up it's the middle of the night, the lights are off and somebody's put a pretty patchwork quilt over you. You can still hear the rain outside, but this place doesn't leak or let the wind in and you snuggle down with a happy sigh.

The sobs are muffled, quiet, if you hadn't heard your mother hide crying so often you might not have noticed. It's hard to find your way in the dark, you stub your toe on the bottom of the stairs. Harry's bed is soft but cold, when you put your head on the pillow it smells faintly of salt. You slip your hand around Harry's waist, he's shirtless and shivers at the touch. It takes you a minute to realise that Peter's there on the other side of Harry. You don't know what to think about that, so you don't think anything, letting Harry fall asleep when he's used up his tears. It takes hours.

Peter's gone when you wake up, Harry's still beside you. He stares at the ceiling with eyes as blank as ice pools. You move to slide out of bed and he catches your wrist in his hand, hurting you with the force of his grip. You don't flinch. You can handle pain.

The tv's on again, filling up the silence with noisy mindlessness, Harry sitting in its glow like it can warm him, when Peter gets back.

"Where were you?" you ask him. He holds up a pile of printouts, assignments and notes from the look of it.

"Homework stuff. If I miss any more I'll have to defer," he explains. "Here, I got you guys coffee and a newspaper."

"No sign of Spider-Man for days," you read off the front page. "They're starting to think he's been hurt or something, huh?"

"I hope not," Harry says, dragging his eyes away from the television. "I want to be the one to hurt him."

Peter presses a cup of coffee into Harry's hand and squeezes his shoulder carefully, as if Harry could shatter under any pressure.

You've got a scar on one ankle, from when you were nine and you didn't put your bike away properly and your parents made you ride it barefoot to teach you a lesson. It's a white, splotchy, raised area about the size of a small coin. There are two just like it on Peter's wrists, you notice them as you wash plates for dinner.

"Oh, that. They're the legacy of a troubled past," he says with a wry grin when you ask. It's almost like he's laughing at you.

The three of you play Monopoly, nobody is surprised when Harry wins by a huge margin. A tiny black spider scuttles out of the box, a scribble against the cardboard.

"When I was a kid," says Harry. "I was so afraid of spiders." He raises his hand to squash it.

"Don't," you say, but he's already crushed it into a smudge under his thumbnail.

"You're on his side, aren't you?" Harry snaps, glaring at you. "You love Spider-Man."

"Harry, come on," Peter puts his hand over Harry's. "If MJ had a thing for guys who could shoot sticky white stuff in a split second, you two would still be a couple."

There's a tense moment of stillness, then Harry snorts with laughter and it's the first time you've seen him smile since his father died. He cuffs Peter on the side of the head.

"Dork," he says, and packs the Monopoly board away.

The moon's big and gold outside, you stand at the window and watch it against the lights of the city. You're wearing fuzzy grey socks with the sweater and shorts now, it's fun to wriggle your toes and feel the knit shift. You watch late-night tv and Harry starts to doze off. Peter pulls him to his feet.

"Time for bed now, Mr Osborn."

"'m not Mr Osborn. That's still my Dad." Harry's voice is sleepy and sad. Peter gives him a soft smile and a half-hug, then offers a hand out to you. It makes all the sense in the world to take it, to slip into bed beside Harry again. You wake up before either of them in the morning, and you watch them sleep. They both seem to be having nightmares, and you don't know how to rescue them.

Peter, upon waking, sits cross-legged on the end of the bed and reads stories out of yesterday's newspaper. Harry starts making up jokes about the news, and Peter shushes him and glares in a way that's supposed to be stern, you think.

"No talking in class."

"You're not wearing a shirt, I'm glad none of my highschool teachers ever dressed like that," retorts Harry. You can't help laughing.

"Yeah, I'm sure you would have been heartbroken if Ms Collins had turned up without a top," you tease. Harry brandishes a pillow at you, and Peter drapes the newspaper on your head.

They have a lot of books. You never got into the habit of reading, it wasn't something that featured in your childhood. You had to read some of these ones for class, though. To Kill a Mockingbird, the Picture of Dorian Gray, Lord of the Flies. Trainspotting, you saw the movie of that one.

Peter's photos are clipped to a string along one wall. He's good, but not great, it's like he's always in a hurry to get to the next picture and never quite gets the current one finished. Just because he loves it doesn't give him a natural talent, and you think there's probably a parable about your acting to be found there. You don't care to seek it.

Your clothes are dry but you hesitate to change back into them, because then you'll just be MJ again. Right now you're part of this weird Harry-Peter-MJ creature, and you like it better.

"Did you know that Little Miss Muffett was a real person?" Peter asks you. "In the sixteenth century. Her father, Doctor Thomas Muffett, wanted to know what effect spider bites had on people, so he collected every sort he could and tested the bites on her. He thought she was expendable, because girls can't carry on a family name."

You wonder how Peter can know all these strange, small things without getting them all confused in his head.

Harry puts on an old record, you think it's kinda funny that it's only really rich people and really poor people who mostly listen to records now. You try and remember the dance lessons you took when you were a kid, but it's not really dancing music anyway. Mournful and melancholy, and Peter rolls his eyes at you. You're so glad Peter's around, he's keeping Harry sane. You don't want to be away from either of them for even a second.

There's an old birthday card of Peter's in one of the kitchen drawers, it smells like his aunt May's perfume. You remember that smell from afternoons years ago, in the summer when all the kids used to play hopscotch on the pavement and she'd bring out lemonade for you. People liked Peter back then, he hadn't yet lost his confidence to awkwardness. He's grown into himself again now, and you're glad of it. You used to think Harry was confident, insolent almost, but now you think that maybe he and Peter were more alike than anybody suspected.

You try on Harry's glasses, slipping them up your nose, but you can still see fine so you guess the prescription's not very strong. It's almost like there's no change at all, and you wonder at that. You think Harry may have gotten them back before Peter started wearing contacts.

"Let's go to a park tomorrow," you say, stretching your arms above your head. A strip of concave belly shows between the shorts and the sweater but you don't feel exposed at all. "Out in the sunshine. We'll all turn into pale little ghosts if we stay in here another day."

"I'm up for it."

The way Peter says it, you know he's only up for it if Harry's up for it too. Harry has all the power at the moment, everything's running at the pace he sets. You and Peter are on his side against the world, for now at least.

"Yeah, ok," Harry gives you both a thin attempt at a smile. The three of you go to bed and it occurs to you you've never actually slept with anyone before these last few days. You learnt how to make all the right noises in the back of Flash's old car, and then later in his new car, but he always dropped you home after. And when you were dating Harry he always played the gentleman, taking you out for breakfast some days, staying up with you until really late just holding you and touching your skin, but the two of you never did anything as simple as just curling up together and sleeping. You like it, you like how Peter and Harry don't seem nervous at all inside their skin. You envy their confidence, you've never felt that comfort within yourself. The sounds of the city are a weird lullaby outside. You're glad it's not raining anymore.


End file.
